How Much Data To Download A Book

Discover new favorite books and grow your collection with Apple Books. You can use the Books app on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with the latest version of iOS.

You can also read books in the Books app on your Mac.

How Much Data To Download A Book For Free

You might not be able to purchase books and audiobooks in your country or region, but you can access free public domain books. Learn what's available in your country or region.

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Explore the Books app

Navigate the Books app using the tabs at the bottom of the app. Read on for explanations of what you can find in each tab.

If you want to return to these tabs while reading, tap the center of your device to open the controls at the top of the screen, then tap to close the book and return to your library.

Reading Now

In this tab, you have quick access to the last book or audiobook that you were reading. You can also see items that you add to your Want To Read list and recommendations based on your reading history.

Library

Your Library contains all of the books, book series, PDFs, and audiobooks that you buy from the Book Store or manually add to your library.

To view just a certain media type, tap Collections. To organize your content in a different way, create a custom Collection: tap New Collection, enter a title for your collection, then add books from your Library.

Organize your Library

To organize your Library, tap Sort under Collections. You can choose to sort your content by recent purchases, title, author, or manually. Tap to change to a list view. You can also sort any collection this way. For example, go to Collections > PDFs to sort your PDFs by author.

To see only what you've downloaded to your device, go to Collections > Downloaded. You won't see Downloaded if you haven't downloaded anything.

Book Store

Buy new books in the Book Store. You can browse what's new and trending, or check the Apple Books and New York Times top charts. You can also tap in the upper-right corner to browse by genres like Young Adult, Nonfiction, or Comics & Graphic Novels.

Read a sample

To read a sample of a book (if available), tap any book to view its product page, then tap SAMPLE below the book's price button.

You can also listen to samples of audiobooks: Tap any audiobook, then tap PREVIEW below the audiobook's price button.

Audiobooks

In this tab, you can find the audiobooks that are available in the Book Store. Browse what's new and trending, or check out the Apple Books top charts. You can also tap in the upper-right corner to browse by genres like Kids & Young Adults or Self Development, or tap Great Narrators to view audiobooks with full-cast dramatizations or celebrity narrators. Learn more about audiobooks.

Audiobooks aren't available in all countries and regions. Learn what's available in your country or region.

Search

Use this tab to search for specific titles, authors, narrators, and more. After you search, you'll see results that are already in your Library and books and audiobooks that are available to buy in the Book Store.

Read books

Tap any book to open it and start reading. If you close the book, Apple Books remembers where you stopped and starts there when you start reading again.

You can read samples of books in the Book Store.

Show and hide controls

While reading, tap the center of your device to open the controls at the top of the screen.

Tap to close the book and return to your library.
Tap to view the table of contents. You can also jump to any bookmarks or notes from here.
Tap to change how the page looks. You can increase or decrease the font size; change to a different colored background, including a dark one; turn on Auto-Night Theme*; or turn off Scrolling View to swipe between pages.
Tap to search the book for a specific word or page number.
Tap to save your place for later. In some books, you can also tap to bring up a list of your bookmarks.

* Turn on Auto-Night Theme to automatically change the bookshelf, page color, and brightness when using Books in low-light conditions. (Not all books support Auto-Night Theme.)

Take notes

Get more out of your book without leaving the Books app. Touch and hold any word in a book to open the text selection tool. Tap Look Up to view a word's definition and other suggestions from the web. Tap Highlight to make it easy to find your selection later, or Note to highlight the selection and add notes.

To find your notes later, you might need to go to different places depending on the book. For most books, tap then tap Notes. For some books, you can just tap .

Download or delete content

If you want to read a book or listen to an audiobook when you're not connected to Wi-Fi or the Internet, you can download it to your iOS device or computer. You can also delete items from your devices.

Download books and audiobooks

To download a book, find the item in your Library, then tap under the book's cover image. If the book is part of a series, open the series first, then download a specific book.

If you don't see or , the book is already downloaded to your device.

To download an audiobook, tap Reading Now, then tap your profile icon. Under My Purchases, tap Audiobooks, then find the audiobook that you want to download. Tap to redownload your previous purchase.

Delete books, audiobooks or PDFs

Tap underneath the item, choose Remove, then choose Remove Download. If you want to remove a purchased book from your Library entirely, tap Hide Book.

If the item is part of a series, you might need to open the series first before you can delete it. You might also see an option to Delete Everywhere if it's a PDF or other item that you added to your Library from a source other than the Book Store.

Change your settings

To control some settings of Apple Books on your iOS device, you need to have iCloud Drive turned on: Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud and turn on both iCloud Drive and Books. Then go to Settings > Books.

Under Syncing, you can change settings like these:

Turn on Reading Now to sync your reading progress, current book, notes, and bookmarks using your iCloud account. Reading Now only syncs to other iOS devices, not your Mac.
Turn on iCloud Drive to sync PDFs, EPUBs, and books created with iBooks Author that you didn't purchase from the Book Store that you added to your Library across all of your devices.

Under Allow Books To Access, turn on Cellular Data to stream books while your iPhone or iPad is connected to the Internet via a cellular connection and using cellular data.

How Much Data Does It Take To Download A Book

You can also change settings in the Books app. Tap Reading Now, then tap or your picture in the upper-right corner. From here, you can redownload your purchases, access Family Purchases, and redeem gift cards or content codes.

Learn more

Read books in the Books app on your Mac.
Learn how to listen to audiobooks.
You can also add DRM-free EPUB file format books, iBooks Author books, books that you create with Pages, MP3 audiobooks, AAC audiobooks, and Audible.com audiobooks to your Library.
Save copies of PDFs from emails and webpages into the Books app.
If you're an author or publisher, learn how to publish your book on the Book Store with iBooks Author or Pages.

You've likely heard by now about Cambridge Analytica, the shadowy, Trump-affiliated data analysis firm that reportedly siphoned off information belonging to 50 million Facebook users, according to The Guardian and Observer, along with The New York Times. In the wake of the scandal over Facebook's privacy practices, users have become newly interested in the data that Facebook collects and retains about them. But while the social network makes it fairly simple to download everything it knows about you, it doesn't provide a roadmap for how to parse that data or figure out what it means.

Facebook announced Wednesday, however, that in the coming weeks, it will expand the data it allows you to download to include likes, reactions, search history, and location history. The social network also plans to add an option for users to transfer the data to another service if they want. Part of the rollout includes a new tool called Access Your Information, which allows users to more easily view and delete old posts, reactions, comments, and search history.

For now though, your Facebook data is still likely filled of surprises. Over the weekend, some Android users were shocked to learn that Facebook retained metadata about their call and SMS history. That's far from the only interesting piece of information you might find by sorting through your Facebook file. Here's what I found looking through mine, and tips for how to find the most interesting information in yours.

Get the Goods

First, you'll need to download the file of data that Facebook has on you. To do so, go to your Facebook settings. At the bottom of the General tab, you should see an option to Download a copy of your Facebook data_. After opting in, you'll receive two emails, one acknowledging that Facebook received your request, and another that includes the file when it's ready. Depending on how much content you've posted to Facebook—including photos, videos, text posts, and other forms of media—it might take some time for the file to be prepared.

I've been on Facebook for over a decade, and my 277.2 MB file was ready within a half hour. But I also haven't uploaded many photos or videos to the site. Once you have the file, you can download it as a folder to your desktop. Mine was labeled 'facebook-louisematsakis.'

The first piece of information you will want to look at is a file labeled index.htm. Clicking on this file will open a tab within your browser, with a menu of options on the left-hand side. Under Profile, you'll find a list of basic information the site has about you, like the exact time you signed up for Facebook, the contact information you've provided, as well as any work or education history.

One surprising piece of information on this screen: Facebook keeps a list of everyone you've previously said you were in a relationship with. For me, this includes a bunch of my friends, because back in middle and high school, it was cool to declare you were in a relationship with a close friend. The list only includes three people I've actually dated. The very first person on the list is, inexplicably, my own cousin (being 13 was weird, OK?).

Photos, Videos, and Friends

The Photos tab contains every photo you've ever uploaded to the site, as well as related metadata, like the IP address from which each photo was uploaded. Scroll down, and you'll find a link to the facial recognition data that Facebook retains. If you click it, you can see your Example Count, which could be the number of photos Facebook used to train a machine learning algorithm to recognize your face. My Example Count is 214. Facebook says this figure is 'a unique number based on a comparison of the photos you're tagged in. We use this data to help others tag you in photos.'

If you want to opt-out of Facebook's facial recognition features, here’s how to do that.

One interesting note about photos: My Facebook data didn’t appear to included tagged photos of me, just photos I had uploaded myself.

How Much Data Is Used To Download A Book

The Videos tab contained dozens of clips I posted to my friends' timelines when I was a teenager. It's impressive how much you can forget what you shared over the years; I was horrified to realize that Facebook had so many grainy videos of my face at 13, 14, and 15 years old. Also fun? If you recorded a video on Facebook but never actually posted it, Facebook still has it.

In the Friends tab you'll find every single one of your Facebook friends, as well as the date that you added each other. If you unfriended someone, and then re-added them later, they'll show up on this list twice. The list also includes all of the friend requests that you have declined.

Pay special attention to the very bottom of the page, where you can see what 'Friend Peer Group' Facebook thinks you're in. Mine says 'Starting Adult Life.'

Advertising & Other Weird Info

How Much Data Is Used To Download A Book

The most interesting part of your index is the Ads tab. There, Facebook will show you a list of ad categories it has associated with your account. Mine include dozens of publications like Harper's and Buzzfeed, as well as vexing ones like 'Goth subculture' and 'Middle Class.'

I have certainly poked people on Facebook more times than this.

Below this list you'll find advertisements you've supposedly clicked on; mine has 40, dating back to January. And below that is a distressing list of advertisers Facebook says 'have your contact information.' (Former Facebook ad executive Antonio García Martínez suggests that this means the advertisers came to Facebook with your information, not the other way around.) They may have brought this information to the social network using Facebook's custom audience tool, according to a Facebook representative. For me, this includes major corporations like Walmart, ASOS, Airbnb, and Marriott Rewards. It also includes a number of bands, the dating app Happn, which I don't recall ever using, and 'House of Blues Dallas.' I have never been to Dallas.

One data set seems surprisingly incomplete; under Pokes I was inexplicably greeted by only two pokes, one from 2013 and another from last year. I have certainly poked people on Facebook more times than this. It's unclear why Facebook has only chosen to retain these two poking instances, though other users appear to have experienced the same oversight. Facebook didn't answer a request for comment about why it has only kept track of a select list of pokes.

The last thing to check in your index is the Applications tab, which is a list of apps you've used to sign up with using your Facebook profile.

Messages

Aside from the index, your Facebook data file should also include several other folders, labeled html, messages, photos, and videos. Mostly they repeat information that’s also included in the index. Don't skip them altogether though. In Messages > files, for instance, are all the files you've sent over Facebook Messenger, and Messages > photos contains all the images you’ve sent. Mine only appear to date back several years, likely because I used to regularly delete my Facebook messages.

Call & SMS Records

If you have an Android device, you may have given Facebook or Facebook Lite permission to access your call and text history years ago. Specifically, before Google changed how permissions worked in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, simply allowing Facebook to access your contacts also let it grab your call and message logs.

Find out for sure by clicking the Contact Info tab. Because I've only ever used an iPhone—Apple doesn't allow apps to scrape call and text history—this tab only contained a list of my phone's contacts. If you have granted permission, this screen will also include a certified creepy list of your call and SMS history.

Get Rid of It

Now that you’ve looked through your Facebook data, here’s how to delete some of it. Keep in mind that Facebook says it plans to soon make it easier to delete data, but for now, the process is fairly cumbersome.

The first place to start is your contacts. First, head over to Facebook’s “Manage Invites and Imported Contacts” page. At the bottom of the screen, there’s an option to “Remove all contacts,” though you can also choose to manually remove specific ones. You’ll need to repeat this step for contacts you’ve uploaded through Facebook Messenger, which you can do here. Lastly, you’ll need to prevent Facebook from continuously re-uploading your contacts. You can learn how to turn off that settings here. Again, you’ll need to do it twice, once on the Facebook App and again on Messenger.

Lastly, here’s how to delete individual posts you’ve made to Facebook. Click the top right-hand options tab on desktop, and then click Activity Log. There, you’ll be able to delete any post from your history, and you can jump to specific years if you’d like to delete the oldest stuff first. If you’re interested in bulk deleting, you can use a Chrome extension like Social Book Post Manager.

If you’re not quite ready mass-remove your old posts, but want to limit who can see them, here’s a full guide to updating your Facebook’s privacy settings. Remember, though, that Facebook says it's going to re-vamp its privacy features in coming weeks—which means you get to do this all over again.

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